Public Display of Hygiene (PDH)
September 26, 2012 § Leave a Comment
I could hear the familiar sound. The one that makes my skin crawl. It was this guy. Clipping his fingernails on the ef’in NYC subway! His snipped bits flipping through the train car. Boomeranging off every surface. Everyone moved away in an effort to find cover. And still he did not notice. No one enjoys a public display of hygiene! (PDH) Bluck.
People. Please. Wear your pajamas to the grocery store. Line a public toilet seat with tissue before you perch upon it. Put on lipstick at the restaurant table. (Hey, that can be sexy!) But for the love of all things – don’t clip your fingernails on public transportation! At any moment I was ready for him to pop off his shoes and socks and dig into his toe nails as well. Double bluck!
He’s not the only one though. Once on an airplane a woman three rows back from me was clipping her fingernails. She only got about 5 clips in before someone else asked her to refrain. And one other time, when I was a kid, I was watching a movie with my new foster parents. He was eating popcorn on one end of the couch. She was clipping her toe nails on the other end of the couch. I was sitting in the middle. We all saw and heard it happen. One ambitious toe nail clipping flipped up into the air and landed smack dab in his popcorn. I’ll never forget it.
I just had to get this out of my system. Thank you.
You might also enjoy: Sweet Dreams Are Made of These | Among Beauty & Monsters, I Live | Strip Club Revelations
This Thing Called Home
February 12, 2012 § 7 Comments
I remember it so clearly. Standing in front of a restaurant on Avenue A and 10th Street. There were these barriers. I was on one side. On the other side there were tables, chairs, plates, napkins, people eating, and huge drinks with fancy stuff sticking out of them.
I stood there for a moment watching. I had to know, why were they on that side of the barrier and me on the other? How was I different? And how might I become like them? These were very honest questions.
There were the obvious things, I was homeless. I did not look pretty as I had spent the night barely sleeping on a park bench in Tompkins Square Park. I was a little drunk on a 40 ouncer of Balentine beer. But I did not feel like I was less worthy some how. I was just not able to get on the other side of that barrier. And I did not understand.
I moved along before I made the diners feel uncomfortable. I just needed to take a good gander and look for any clues.
A few days later there was a street party with bands on 11th Street. I was not feeling so good. The streets were taking the best of me. I sat on a stoop and watched an old man in a sombrero dance recklessly in circles. I looked up and saw the yellow lights emanating from the windows above. It looked warm in there. How do I get in there, I thought? Why am I out here and they are in there? Again, just an honest question. I wanted for something more. I struggled with these thoughts. The questions were bigger than me. But I asked them none the less.
Six years later I moved into my own apartment in the East Village. My name on the lease and everything. I had come so far that it took a few months for me to realize where I was. But one day I walked out of my front door and recognized the stoop where I had once sat feeling perplexed. I then turned around and saw the building I had dreamed of. The warmth, it was now mine.
The beauty of New York City is this. I love this city and this neighborhood. To run the streets. I pass the fire hydrant where I once took my showers. I visit the park benches where I slept with mace gripped tightly in my fist. To eat in the restaurants where the likes of me could not even use the restroom. How often does a homeless person rise above and feel this, I wonder?
I am now on the other side of the barrier and still not entirely sure how I got here.
There are days when these things make me feel sad for that girl on the streets. No one should have to see what she has seen. And other days… I feel like I live on top of the mountain that once seemed impossible to climb.
Runaway
January 5, 2012 § 1 Comment
My foster mother was relentlessly neurotic. She had me cleaning her house to perfection and would always find something wrong with what I did. She’d curse me out if I didn’t ring out the kitchen sponge after washing the dishes. Then she’d turn to her dogs and talk baby talk with them over how wonderful they were. She’d say to her dogs, “My little puppy dog would never forget to ring out the sponge…” She was insane.
She literally insisted every time I stepped out the door that I was going to be raped. According to her murders lurked in every nook, waiting for my teenage body.
She methodically went through every thing I owned, once a week to insure that I wasn’t hiding any cigarettes, letters from boys, liquor or drugs. I had already been orphaned, seen group homes, reformatories and almost a dozen foster families. I was burnt out. I was 15 years old. I needed those cigarettes.
I had a job at a flower shop. Despite the fact that I was barely old enough to work, I loved working as many hours as possible because it was a legit excuse to get out of that house. I was making money and was able to buy myself some clothes, my cigarettes (I hid them in my locker at school) and make up.
One Saturday I finally snapped and quietly decided my time there was done. Before I was to leave for work I pack a bag with a few items. I had an extra change of clothes and that was about all. I knew I couldn’t leave the house with too much stuff or she would notice.
I called in sick to work and figured the 8 hours that I was suppose to be at work would give me a head start on the cops and foster family’s chance of finding me. But without a lot of thought I didn’t have a place to go. I had no plan.
I was however an experienced runner. I knew I couldn’t go to my good friends because I knew that that would be the first place they would look. I couldn’t even tell my good friends what was up because my runaway experiences in the past proved that good friends always crack under pressure. Eventually somebody asks them too many questions and they give in, give you up to the cops or parents.
I went downtown to the record store where I knew some of the guys who worked there. I hung around just trying to make small talk. One of the guys, Kip, was sort of heavy metal burn-out and was in a band with my good friends. I knew he was fond of me because I was a not a typical girl. I was not preppy in pink and lime green. I was my own odd mix of new wave and punk rock. I was stealing most of my clothes out of the theater department’s costume room. I wore the vintage dresses and band uniforms I found there.
So I hung around for an hour or so before I finally told Kip how I was on the run and had no place to go. No plans. I felt fine right there, then, but this was winter in Minnesota and I knew it was going to be a long cold night. He had concern but I could tell he really didn’t want to be involved with a young runaway. He did tell me that if I waited until after midnight or so he would leave his car open and I could sleep in it. But he said I had to sleep on the floor so that no one could see me.
Okay! This was my plan. Now to find a way to spend the rest of the day out of sight. I started to think about my sister in Minneapolis and how if I could reach her I bet she would take me in. She was 19 and had her own apartment. But I was in Steele County, a couple hundred miles away. I developed the long-term plan of hiding out for a few days until the smoke cleared and then talking to one of my friends about driving me to Minneapolis.
It was at this point that some boys from school came into the record shop. They were rich boys, just fucking their Saturday away. They invited me to come with them to a party. It was out in the country somewhere. They said everyone from school would be there. So I went with them. We hung out all day, drove around and then at about 7 or 8pm we drove out to the keg party.
I knew I had hours to kill before I could slip into Kip’s car to sleep. I had never really drunk much; a couple beers here or there. But I’m playing along. I’m drinking beer, talking, they had a band playing in this sort of machine shed of a building we were all in. There were a few hundred people there. I kept my mouth shut about the fact that I was on the run but secretly hoped that someone would see it in my eyes or something. I secretly hoped that someone would take me home with them. Don’t get me wrong, I had never had sex. I just wanted to curl up on their couch, in their grannies homemade quilt.
There was Port-O-Potty that we all had to wait in line to use. I had drunk about three beers by this point and was drunk. As I waited in this line the guy behind me, out of nowhere, and with no warning, pukes over his shoulder and directly onto me. He showers the entire right side of me from my shoulder to my ankle. It was beer and red spaghetti puke. I was mortified. I tried not to make a scene. Up until this point I was just trying to hang out and be relatively invisible.
I pushed my way to the front of the line and people just made way for me with looks of absolute disgust. I slipped into the Pot-O-Potty and began to undress. I was crying in my 1/2 drunken fog. The bathroom was covered in beer piss and dirt from the machine shed’s floor. I teetered on one foot trying to get out of my pants and tried to not touch anything. People outside the door were getting pissed that I was taking so long. They were banging on the door. I was loosing it. More tears.
I shook the vomit cover clothes out a little to release the strings of pasta. I rolled them into a tight ball, keeping the clean side out so that I would not get puke inside my bag. I put on my one change of clean clothes. I walked out of that toilet with my head up as though nothing had just happened. I darted to the other side of the party with hopes that I could die. Or maybe find people who did not see my horrific embarrassment. Or maybe I would see someone I knew to hang around with. And get a beer.
I found beer, tried to blindly smudge my eye makeup back into place and found a cluster of girls that I knew from school. I had lost the boys and was a bit concerned about how I would get back into to town and to Kip’s house. The girls had offered to take me “home.”
The car was packed. I was stuck in the back seat with this one girl and her boy friend as they made out with a fever. Their zippers down. I was blushing. Someone up front was complaining that they smelt puke but no one knew it was me. I had them drop me off two doors up from Kip’s House. They thought it was my house.
It was absolutely freezing outside. I got into his car and found a thin blanket stuffed under the seats. I curled up on the floor and let the beer I had drank put me to sleep. Day broke a few hours later and I awoke to find that I was not in Kip’s car after all. In my drunkenness I had crawled into his parent’s car. My heart dropped because I could hear people inside his house, the sounds of pots and pans being washed. The car was parked just outside the kitchen window.
I slipped out the door that faced away from the kitchen window and down the street. I had nowhere to go. I walked for miles. I had a bag full of puke. It was cold. I was hung over and tired. I smoked. Letting the red glowing end of my cigarette give me the illusion that there was warmth somewhere in the world.
You might also enjoy: Strip Club Revelations | The Peepshow | This is What a Sex Worker Looks Like
Pick Me Up, Dust Me Off
December 31, 2011 § 9 Comments
Last year I rang in the New Year in the bathtub and made a promise that I would try to take better care of myself. That was my only goal set for this year.
It may sound like a simple goal but I have had a fuck of a year. At the end of last year I left my marriage. I have been with my husband since I was in my 20s, so you can image it was not an easy thing to do.
The same week I moved out of my home, my business partners and I decided to close Love U, our sex toy company. I had invested on average 16 hours a day for nearly two years. Not to mention the financial costs and people who were also affected, from employees to the plethora of people across the country who made their living as Love U sales people. I cried my eyes out in between calls as to my Love U-ers. It was the holiday season and it was my responsibility to let them know we were closing down their businesses. It was beyond painful for all of us.
I’m pretty open about the fact that I have experienced and survived a lot of pain in my life. But little did I know there entire categories of pain I had yet to discover. As a person who writes about wellness and stands in front of an audience and speaks about health and wellness my integrity in my work is tied into how well I am in every element of my life.
I was lost. I sat alone in a room and stared at the wall in front of me. That’s all I could do and all I did do for the first 6 months of 2011. I was humbled. I am humbled. I decided I no longer give advice to anyone about anything. I can’t do it. What the fuck do I know? I could not stand in front of an audience and pretend to be happy. So I got up each morning and just sat there. Stunned. Confused. Hurting.
I dumped 2500 Facebook fans. I stopped communicating with the world at large. I sorted my thoughts. Tried to shake it all out. Tried to figure out how two people who are brimming with love and good intentions could still not make a marriage work. I assessed all the preconceived notions and ideas we have about marriage. I thought about what a marriage does to a female artists and how we can lose ourselves within it. Being an artist requires a certain amount of selfishness – a hard thing for me to attain on a good day and an easy thing for any woman to lose in a marriage.
Come June I celebrated New York’s decision to allow gays to marry. I live in a big gay house now and a party exploded in my living room. We dance and laughed. I struggled but I celebrated. By July I was inching my way back on stage. Fuck, I had bills to pay and that’s how I make my living. My amazing friends continued to pick me up, dust me off and send me back out into the world. I am grateful to my friends. By Fall I hit the college circuit all across North America and blew it out. Digging in to what I do best – teaching young people how to love themselves with wild abandoned and be the bad asses they are destined to be. I was starting to remember who I am.
My online fans continued to seek me out despite my efforts to hide, an awesomely relentless bunch they are. I had a loyal group of friends and fans back my upcoming book of dirty words. This was one of the biggest gifts I have had this year, a huge reminder that you want to hear what I have to say and that my words have value to you. I need to write. (Thank you.) I started blogging again. And somehow, through it all I have maintained a loving relationship with my husband, despite the pain we are both still working through.
Truth be told, I have learned that in order to maintain my integrity I had to leave my marriage, just to gain perspective and find myself again. And it took incredible strength to build a business, even if the market was not ready for the vision we all had. In doing so I met beautiful people and made some good friends. I already knew I was resilient as fuck, but I learned that I am resilient in ways I had not realized. Being humbled by life lessons has actually made me a better, more compassionate teacher. Consequently I’m better than I have ever been on stage.
And when I look back at my New Year’s post from last year, my only goal was to take more baths. I did that. Success is mine. FTW.
You might also enjoy: Strip Club Revelations | The Peepshow | This Is What a Sex Worker Looks Like
Strip Club Revelations
December 22, 2011 § 7 Comments
I snuck into strip club on the arm of a cocaine dealer. I was too naive to know he was a drug dealer. I never thought to question why he hung around the peepshows for hours and never took in a show. But then I never questioned why any of the guys were there. The place was full of women in panties.
He even offered me cocaine one day but I turned him down. His exact words were, “Oh. You’re a good girl in disguise.” He seemed surprised and happy about this. It was a very accurate description of me. He and I became fast friends.
After one of my shifts the two of us were on our way to drink some Old English on the stoops by the parking garage around the corner. But first he had to stop in to Runway 69 to “talk to some guy about a thing.” I was totally tickled to be inside because I was underage for drinking clubs. And I had been dying to know what was going on beyond the black glass windows bouncing neon naked ladies back at me.
The dealer told me to stay put near the door and darted to the back of the room. Once my eyes had adjusted to the dimness, I had them focused on just one thing. The girls.
They were up on a narrow walkway behind the bar. They were so far from the customers and with so little space to move. The wall behind them was pure mirror but they had to stand so close to it that you really could not get the 360-degree you wanted. As a young business woman, all I could think was how I’d hate to be up there. How do they get the tips? How do they even bend over? A showgirl’s got to bend over.
One woman caught my eye. She had that beautiful air of despondence. She bumped her hips and would pick up one foot a little here and there. She just didn’t care. She wore a white spandex thong with white suspenders that pulled her thong tight to her pubic mound. It did not look very comfortable.
She had on pink stilettos and white bobby socks. It all worked so well with the black lights and neon that framed the stripper’s runway. The whole thing looked like a scene from an MTV music video, except with boobs and the scent of cheap perfume, liquor and cigarette smoke.
Then it hit me. That was it! SOCKS. She was wearing socks. All the 8-hour days I had spent in the peepshows, leaning against the doorway of my peepshow booth and spinning on the round stage poles. My arches had become accustomed to the burn and were falling into place but the balls of my feel where developing think calluses. And the cheap five-dollar hooker heels were tearing up my skin. Bobby socks. Socks. In my two months working I had never seen anyone do it.
I tried to explain my great revelation to the dealer as he popped open the beers, putting a straw in mine. He just looked out across the street and ignored me. So I stopped talking.
It’s an old story, but the I stumbled (via curvaceousdee) onto this great tale of strip club revelations by Stoya. (A girl after my own heart!) She writes…
In the US, we have this stereotype of strippers and dollar bills. We’ve had that pattern since the seventies. A dollar now buys what $0.17 did in 1970. Things like food, rent, and shoes have gotten more expensive, while the standard tip for a stripper has stayed the same for over thirty years. The next time you visit a strip club and think the girls are lackadaisical, remember that you get what you pay for and they’re no longer being paid enough.
True.
You might also enjoy: Songs for Sex Workers | The Peepshow | This is What a Sex Worker Looks Like
The Peepshow
December 17, 2011 § 14 Comments
I knew nothing about sex. My sexuality had been stunted because logic told me that as a poor person I could not afford to get pregnant or diseased. I was gang girl with brass knuckles on both fists. A real tough cookie, but in some ways I was still very naive.
It was my first month working at Show Follies Peepshow Palace. I was 19 and it was also my first look at adult sexuality. I was looking through a Plexiglas window and it was looking back at me.
A man would whisper in my direction “I got a diaper on.”
And I would laugh, “Oh you’re so funny!” Not understanding the man was actually wearing a diaper and was sexually excited by this.
I was starting to become accustom to how things work. Protect your money, give as little as possible, take as much as possible, don’t touch other people’s wigs, lipstick, or boyfriends.
The girls took a liking to me. They had names like Pebbles, Snowy, CoCo, and Star. Just like all the prostitutes and clowns I had ever seen on television! This was exciting! I even changed my name. I became Domino. Like the sugar. Like the game. Domino.
The girls talked me into buying a wig to cover my shaved head. The first time I put it on, they fought in the dressing room over how shitty it looked and who would help me fix it.
I had never had hair and knew nothing about looking like a woman. When I was about to break down in tears, Snowy dropped a tiger striped barrette in the damn thing and sent me out to my booth.
I want you to understand there is a lot of competition between these women. Everyone wants to look the best and make the most money. I must have looked pretty fucking pathetic for everyone to chip in and try to make me look like a woman.
Later that night Snowy showed me how to roll the wig up and turn it inside out to keep it from getting tangled. Once she had set it so nice, I never once took the barrette out or combed it again. The wig developed dreadlocks on the underside. It got nasty. One day I just threw it in the trash on the corner of 47th Street. Bought a new one.
I am a woman now and I’ve seen thousands of men jerk off. They were all slightly shielded by that layer of Plexiglas that separates a live peepshow girl from her client. It was interesting to see the various techniques the men used. The thumb at the topside of the penis shaft and the hand wrapped around like a fist. Most times they would use a smooth, constant pumping action and then end with a few fast strokes. Others got a bit more spastic.
When they would erupt – the sperm – the spunk would sometimes billow out the little hole and roll down their hand. Other times it would shoot straight out and melt down the glass… It was like lava to me. It really scared me.
They would wipe their hands and penis on their shirttails and tuck them back in to their pants, as though nothing had happened.
(Photo: Times Square, circa 1985. From the Bob Fingerman archives.)
This is What A Sex Worker Looks Like
December 17, 2011 § 19 Comments
I left Show World on a high note. I left before I was totally burned out. My soul intact. Sure I had my rough days at the peepshows: an attempted assault here or there or people trying to coerce me in various ways. But I had (and still have) a strong sense of self worth, an unflinching ability to not betray my own moral standards, an utter reliance on my natural instincts and a mean violent streak when pushed to defend myself. Being as young as I was and having no family or friends who really had the capacity to care for me- I am surprised I did as well as I did in the sex industry.
I remember taking the taxi home to Harlem, from 42nd Street, in the middle of the night. I had a regular driver. He was passed to me by Pinky, another peepshow girl who had quit. His name was Mikie and he was a big Puerto Rican guy. He would always pull up out front, double park, come in and find me. When I was ready, he would walk me out and drive me home. He’d sit and wait until I was safely inside my building before he would pull away. I know that being my driver was a highlight of his shift. He’d get his nightly eyeful of ladies in underwear and a little wad of extra cash on top.
Pinky had taught me to tip high to ensure his happiness. He was the best, she said. So what ever the fair was (usually about $12) I’d just double it. He was worth it. Mikie ensured my safety. I knew he would get me from the peepshow palace to my door in one piece. He may have been an ogler and would often ask for my best story of the evening, but he was so respectful of me. He was careful with me. I needed him. Because frankly, I was alone in the world. I knew darn well that if I were murdered in an alley, no one would notice I was gone for perhaps weeks or months. I don’t know that there is a feeling lonelier than that one.
Less than a year after I quit Show World I found myself sitting on a park bench on the skirts of Central Park. There was a newspaper someone had left behind. On the front page a story about a murder at Show World. A woman, a mother, a peepshow girl. She had been killed in my old dressing room and her body was not found for eight full hours, an entire shift. She laid there beaten and bleeding to death. At the foot of my locker. Her name was Yvonne Hausley.
I sat on the park bench reading the story and feeling sick. I did not know her. But her story reminded me that no matter how tough I may think I am, a predator finds their way. And they so often target the invisible people in our population… the poor, the foster children, the disabled, the immigrants, sex workers… The best way to fight them is to shine a light on issue and for the vulnerable to shine a light on ourselves.
I am a former sex worker. This is what a sex worker looks like. At any given moment there is an estimated one million sex workers of every gender working in the world. When you include those of us who have left the industry, our numbers are bountiful. We are everywhere. We are your children, your sisters, your brothers, your mothers… we are everywhere.
Today is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. I would like to dedicate this post to Yvonne Hausley and her children. Your mother is not forgotten and may your lives be blessed.
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A Howling Groaning Moan
December 14, 2011 § 1 Comment
I lived in the attic of flop house on 24th and Dupont. There were two small apartments on the top floor and together we shard one little bathroom. In the hallway closet my next-door neighbor stored his vast porn magazine collection. So many magazines that when I would open the door, they would come sliding out and falling down around my feet. Literally stacked Dr. Seuss style from the floor to the ceiling and stuck in every crevice in between. The fear of being caught rummaging through his closet o’smut made doing so that much more fun.
The second floor had four rooms and two shared bathrooms. Sometimes, if the porn collector was using the attic bathroom, I would take the narrow back stairs down to the second floor to pee. Those bathrooms were never clean enough because they were all drunks on that floor. Flip flops were mandatory no matter which bathroom I used though. I have a standing rule to never touch the bathroom floor of a flop house.
Early on Saturday morning I had to pee and the porn collector could be heard whistling away in the tub. I snuck down the stairs. Just as I sat down to pee, I began to hear the oddest moan sound come from the other side of the bathroom wall.
It was a bit of a sex sound, mixed with a moose howl, mixed with pain. It was baffling. The sound was repeated in an almost rhythmic fashion. It continued as I slipped up the back stairs and safely into my room.
I contemplated how weird that was. But in a flop house you really do not go knocking on another person’s door. If someone knocked on your door, you don’t answer. They either want drugs or money or money for drugs or sex or drugs for sex. Or some combination thereof. Whatever was going on was not my business and I stayed the fuck out of it.
As I puttered around my room I continued to faintly hear the howling groaning moan. Soon it was overtaken by the sounds of sirens nearing the dilapidated address. They stopped out front. If cop cars and ambulances stop their sirens in front of your house enough times you learn to recognize the exact location of the crime or accident in relation to the very spot you are standing. It’s a learned skill.
They came up the front stairs with a lot of commotion. I opened my door just a bit so I could hear what was going on. In between groans, the moaner began to talk.
His name was Bingo Bob. He loved bingo. They called him Bingo Bob. He was drinking. And playing cards. With some woman. She was an Indian. Didn’t know her name. They had just met. They got in a fight and she stabbed him in the forehead. With a fork.
And that was all I got. They dropped him on top a gurney and carried him off to Hennepin County Hospital, leaving the hallway littered with gauze bandage wrappers and rubber gloves.
Elusive: An upcoming book by Ducky DooLittle
August 23, 2011 § Leave a Comment
My next book is available for pre-purchase. It’s self-published. Buy now, help me cover printing costs and join in the celebration via Kickstarter!
Vulnerable
April 30, 2011 § 6 Comments
I teeter in this place. Never sure. Never totally at ease. I open up such intimate parts of my life to the world. In writing, online and on stage. My rough upbringing, having had a mentally ill mother, homelessness, my history as a sex worker, pieces of my sexuality… to name a few. For the most part, when I do share, I wait until a vast amount of time has past and then find that distance gives me the freedom. (Hopefully any parties involved in the story are dead and/or unrecognizable due to that distance.)
But with as much as I share about my history, I am at the same to so deeply private about most of my life. Especially what I may be going through in the immediate. When I see people expounding on their immediate life issues in (blogs and on facebook) they so often seem off the handle or down right insane to me. Blasting their life out into the world as it unfolds. I’m never sure how much I should share and who I should share it with. Sometimes I wonder why I even have the compulsion to share.
I do know why. I just question it at times.
I do it because I love the moments when I get off stage and someone steps up to tell me I have had an impact on their life. They ask for hugs. They hand me little handmade tokens of affection. They give me lovely words. And the love letters that come into my email box are astoundingly beautiful. People relate to pieces of my story. They feel they are less alone in their experience. It’s deeply touching.
But other times people will step up to me, after being exposed to my work, and behave as though they believe they know me. Really know me. They think because they have seen one little window into who I am or what my experiences has been – that they know me. And they don’t. It’s confusing and almost hurtful at times. To think they are so enamored by the vision they have created in their head that they can’t see that I am a whole soul that exists beyond and despite what they might know of me.
This thing, to be even slightly well known, is a baffling affair. When giving me words of advice on how to write my memoir, Augusten Burroughs (of Running with Scissors fame) said, “Just write as though no one is ever going to read it.” Not as easy as it sounds.
“What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful.” ~Brene Brown